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I am glad to announce that I have a new presence in a Downtown Gallery (since May 2019), and it’s an excellent space that benefits the entire Oahu art community, so I would like to tell you a little about it. This new space is a much needed addition to Oahu’s art scene. For a couple of years, some of Oahu’s large community display venues have been closing. Organizations such as Windward Artists Guild, Association of Hawaii Artists, and Pastel Artists of Hawaii (among many others) have been struggling to find a good place to hold displays of their artwork in the aftermath. Member shows are a major function of every art guild, allowing for artists to share and strengthen their display skills, as well as supplying an audience that allows new artists to emerge, and established artists to build recognition and branch out to new locations they may not have shown in before. These non-profit guilds are an important element of the art world here on Oahu, but their intended goals are only possible if there are good venues where the public can see the work of the art guilds.

Imagine the excitement when a new venue popped up this spring in Historic Downtown Chinatown area. It is Downtown Art Center located at 1041 B Nuuanu Ave, in Honolulu. It is now part of one of the most artistically active parts of Oahu. Near Arts at Marks Garage, Hawaii Theater, Artists Lofts, and a few galleries as well, the gallery is in the First Friday Art Walk zone, and one of the major goals of the center is to allow non-profit groups the display space they need.

Downtown Art Center has a beautiful space where non-profit art organizations can hold shows. Shows have been running on a monthly basis since March of 2019. Every First Friday, Downtown Art Center presents a new artists reception for monthly group shows. There are free guitar/ukulele music concerts every Tuesday at lunch noon – 1pm, and an open watercolor session where artists can bring medium sized work to a group setting and work together, benefiting from the inspiration of what other artists are creating on Thursdays. It’s off to a great start!

partial view of Wendy’s wall at Downtown Art Center for September 2019

Since about May, I have been helping with the website and social media. Thus, I am for the time being, an artist in residence at DAC. This means I have a significant number of works for sale at Downtown Arts Center. Please feel free to visit 11:30 am – 3:30 pm Monday – Friday. One of the best times to visit is on the first Friday of each month from 6 – 9 pm for First Friday Art Walk. In the main area, the artists from the monthly community arts show will be there to greet visitors.

Lion Coffee unveiled the new art wall, and the redesign of their packaging in May of 2018

I noticed today that Lion Coffee in Honolulu continues to support local artists with their cafe wall which has been displaying and selling local art since May of 2018. Oahu’s high real estate prices make running a gallery very difficult. It has been a wonderful help to us all to have restaurants, boutiques, and other businesses willing to share their walls with the local art community on a rotating basis so we can more easily sell our work. From the very beginning of the project, Lion understood this need, and they have been so supportive! This is truly an effort on their part to encourage the arts scene and give us all more wall space and more opportunity to sell work. I helped design the rail and line hanging system they have installed on the wall and tested it as their first artist. They are a joy to work with as an artist setting up display there too! I had a truly great experience working with them to establish this display area, and also during the installation of the show. Their friendly staff serves and sells amazing coffee!

This space has been open to artists for about a year and a half as of this writing. They reached out to me back in 2018 asking for assistance in knowing which types of display system to install. The timing was perfect because I had experienced the full range of hanging systems throughout the years of display with art guilds like Windward Artists Guild and Association of Hawaii Artists. Not every space works best with the same hanging system, but clearly in their situation, a rail hanging system with perlon lines and sliding hooks was ideal for security and flexibility considering the rotating displays. We crunched some dimensions together and came up with a two-rail system that spans the wall and offers hooks for up to 30 pieces, with almost infinite adaptability while reducing damage to the wall. Most artists will only be able to fit about 15 – 20 pieces of art depending on size of the pieces. The lighting and paint create a wonderful environment for the art. If you are an artist living and working in Oahu, you can call the cafe to start the process of applying for a show there. It’s a great space for a small solo show.

Lion makes amazing coffee, delicious pastries, and offers tours of their roasting facilities. The cafe is my favorite oasis in that area of town! I stop in when I am running errands around that neighborhood of Honolulu. The cafe is located at 1555 Kalani St, Honolulu, HI 96817.

I have updated the postcard invitation for the Paradise Painters Show at Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden. In addition to my own work and that of Cris Meier with her beautifully detailed renderings in acrylic, and Jaime Mendame’s dreamy tropical oil paintings of landscapes, sea life, and florals, I am delighted to announce the addition of two more artists to the display. Louise Alina joins us with her palette knife landscape paintings, and Ilana Nimz brings a working marine biology background to her art, allowing her to depict rare sights she saw while conducting research on birds, sharks, seals, and more. It’s a really interesting show with a lot to see and think about! It is on display daily from 9 am – 4 pm. The park is absolutely gorgeous so make sure to spend a little time wandering through the acres of scenery!

I will be talking to a group about the mo’olelo of Hauwahine and other stories within the gallery. You are welcome to listen in on Wednesday August 7,2019 at 1:30 pm. There is no reception for this show, but I am always happy to give a little tour of the gallery and talk about what I know of the various works in this show. Please contact me to arrange a meeting.

You are invited to view the upcoming exhibit featuring the art of four artists. In the past couple of years it’s been just three of us, Cris Meier, Jaime Mendame, and myself. We have a new artist this year that I haven’t had a chance to meet yet, but I will when I learn how to spell her name. This annual art display at Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden is one of the largest of the year for me. This year will feature over 20 original paintings, and a couple of giclees (canvas prints), debuting several new paintings both large and small. There is no reception for this show, but I will be happy to give you a tour upon request. Please contact me, and we can arrange to meet at the gallery. I will be happy to tell you about my own work and what I know of my talented colleagues as well. Jaime Mendame often paints on site on the weekends during the duration of this show, and he is very fun to watch.

Notably for me, this show will offer the first chance to see the paintings “Hauwahine, Guardian of Kawainui” and “Sunset at Na Pohaku o Hauwahine” displayed together. These are two major works that were inspired by the process of the Association of Hawaii Artists’ recent exhibit, “Wahi Pana: A Sense of Place” that recently finished display at the Honolulu Museum of Art School Main Gallery. Oahu artists were invited to learn the history of a sacred and storied place of legend (a wahi pana), and then encouraged to use the new information to capture the spirit of the location in art. This is the first time both related works created about Kawanui’s beautiful Na Pohaku o Hauwahine area will be shown together. Only “Hauwahine, Guardian of Kawainui” was completed in time for the museum exhibit, but the two paintings depict the everyday beauty and the legendary meaning of the same place, respectively. I feel they are deeply related to each other and I’m glad they will be seen together at least this once.

Hauwahine Guardian of Kawainui

Sunrise at Na Pohanu o Hauwahine

Also debuting at this show, the painting, “Anianiau with Orange Ohia”, a painting of the endangered honeycreeper bird from Kauai with the rare orange form of the ohia flowers (featured on the postcard above). Another major work, “Birds of Kalalau” will be making its first appearance, and several small original affordable works that will not be placed online until after this show. Some paintings always sell during the show, so please take the opportunity to go see it early in its run if you want to see every piece (and/or have first pick!)

I am very pleased to announce that I will be one of the guest artists on HI on Art, a new TV show that is currently running on Oahu Spectrum Cable Channel 11 at 11 pm each Saturday. The episode with my clip will be on July 27, 2019, and you can find it online at the HI on Art website: https://www.hionart.com/ for a limited time after its airing. Special thanks to Will Espero and Fred Vanderpoel for taking the time to come to my studio and film the segment – they were wonderful company and very skilled! Their show is seeking sponsors and artists, and all kinds of community involvement. They do great work! I will be tuning in each week and look forward to seeing who will be on the show each week. The premiere was wonderful! I like the long pan shots of details of the art, and I love hearing the thoughts everyone has to share! Truly, everyone has an interesting story and since I enjoy hearing from other creative people, this is a new favorite show!

Hauwahine is a shapeshifting Hawaiian diety who protects Kawainui Marsh, the largest open wetland of Kailua. In the stories of Hauwahine, she watches over the area, alternately appearing as a beautiful Hawaiian woman, or a huge lizard/dragon creature called a mo’o to charm or threaten humans as needed to cultivate positive behavior. Stories of mo’o taught values of community and sustainability such as sharing food generously, caring for the land, avoiding overfishing, and paying attention to seasonal water safety. Here I have taken an age-old technique of narrative paintings, showing multiple forms of Hauwahine simultaneously. She sits in human form on the promontory of her own mo’o form which is depicted as stony grey and covered with lichen, which adheres to both the traditional description of Hauwahine’s mo’o form as well as my firsthand observation of the boulders that inspired this mo’olelo. In the sky, a bird soars over the modern marsh toward the rising sun.

After learning several mo‘olelo (legends) from kumu (Hawaiian teachers), a pattern emerged in my mind. There is a keen observation of rock forms that usually informs the lore of each area, so imagine the “chicken skin” moment when I saw the huge rock that forms Hauwahine’s favorite promontory, Na Pohaku Hauwahine (Boulders of Hauwahine), is shaped like a giant lizard or dragon head! I tried to make my painting reflect the scale of the massive rock. I had seen portrayals of Hauwahine as a lizard at max 8 feet long or thereabouts, but this pohaku (boulder) was seeming to indicate a GIANT lizard, much larger than the usual artistic depictions. You may also have noticed, if you live in Kailua, that this painting does not depict the kamani trees on the pohaku. I chose not to include them in this particular painting even though I am very happy that they are growing there and seeding out to the areas below the promontory of Na Pohaku o Hauwahine. The decision to exclude the kamani trees was a largely visual choice. I felt like the outline of the mo‘o would get obscured by the trees, so I chose to omit the foliage and leave the mo’o clearly visible.

The depiction of a white fairy tern, a bird no longer living in Kawainui area, is the aspect of my painting that piques the most curiousity to those familiar with her story. The initial oral identification of the bird as a fairy tern was from a caretaker of Na Pohaku on the day we were shown the mo‘o rock. I do not remember his name, but he seemed to know the mo‘olelo of Hauwahine very thoroughly. He told me she could turn into a bird. When I asked what sort of bird she took as her form (because as an oil painter who LOVES to paint birds, this was wonderful news!), he said it was the Manu o Ku, or white fairy tern. I have been able to find the chants about her either turning into a bird or calling a bird or a flock of birds to cast a shadow and block out the sun as a warning, but not the written evidence that it was a fairy tern as of yet. Hauwahine’s relationship to birds is mentioned in the story of Hi’iaka’s visit to Kailua. There are three versions of this chant by different authors over a considerable span of time, and much like any story which is loved and retold by multiple authors, each one is different, but one of the elements of this mo’olelo is Hauwahine’s ability to send a bird (or a flock of birds) into the sky to darken the sun. In one version of the chant, her relationship to the bird is left vague, allowing for the possibility that she might also in this tale have shapeshifted into a bird. In these chants, no specific bird-type is mentioned. In one of the chant versions, the open wording means she might also have been in the company of other guardians who were shapeshifting into a bird or flock of birds. Plural and singular in Hawaiian language is often determined by context. Oral history often carries details like this without making it to print as well, so my next step will be to ask a local kumu. I am intrigued and have spent quite lot of time tracking down the chants and stories of Hauwahine, learning a lot in the process.

Here are some of my favorite resources I have seen during my time of research:

A wonderful video created by the school children of Kamehameha School (this is my favorite Hauwahine story!): https://vimeo.com/122069365

Although I haven’t found my conclusion yet on whether a fairy tern was one of the birds of Hauwahine, it is not an unreasonable idea. The fairy tern seems an unusual bird if you consider the area in modern times. They have been extinct from Kailua for a long time and Kawainui is freshwater. The beautiful fairy tern is a saltwater-feeding and coastal bird. However, they nest inland, as far in as the mountains! If you consider the nesting habits and the natural history of the area, it becomes quite plausible. Most of Coconut Grove was filled in by manmade means in the 1930s, and the flow of water has been cut off since the levee was constructed, leaving Kaelepulu stream almost dry. In ancient times, Kaelepulu would have been brackish near the ocean, its waters winding through the freshwater fishpond of Kawainui all the way up to the springs and waterfalls of Maunawili. Without the land filled in by human intervention, Kailua’s coast would have been much closer to Kawainui, and the land would have had more water flowing as well. The fairy tern would likely have lived along the coast of Kailua not far from the marsh, and nested inland, often flying over the marsh. We see the nesting behavior inland in our Honolulu populations. I am still researching the mo‘olelo of Hauwahine, so there will likely be an update on this point, but I find it highly likely that Hauwahine would have been able to summon assistance from a fairy tern at some point in the history of Kailua’s changing wetlands.

Beautiful Hauwahine, with her fierce mo’o form is a vivid symbol for taking care of our environment. Land all around the marsh has been developed, but the legend of Hauwahine remains strong. The marsh remains undeveloped and wild, a miracle that is the result of Hawaiians, environmentalists, the difficulties of development in flood plains, and the spirit of Hauwahine working in tandem to keep the land untamed. I hope it will be restored with native flora and fauna, and that someday the white fairy tern population will once more live on the shores of Kailua.

The Wahi Pana exhibit is up right now as I write this – the reception came and went in a blur! I tended the show and gave tours a lot during the first week. I truly thought I would have more time to keep everyone up to date on the status of the exhibit while it was still an “upcoming exhibit”, but it turns out that this exhibit was a full-time job for several months and it ramped up to a fever pitch for me right before the reception as I struggled to finish the vinyl signage and the website, wahi-pana.com. Thus, I sent out a quick social media alert about the reception, but now I want to follow it up here and invite you to the exhibit. Wahi Pana: A Sense of Place is on display until July 5. It is spectacular! So many excellent paintings that display a true connection to the land and the history that make Hawaii unique.

Personally, I will be sitting 2 more times: Thursday, June 27, 2019 10:30 – 1 pm, and July 3, 2019, 1 pm – 4:30 pm. If you are not able to come at those particular times, but would still like to have me show you around, please contact me. There are always artists at the gallery, giving visitors information and adding a personal touch to the display.

You can also view a video covering the overall concept of the exhibit. I dusted off my video editing skills again to create a little overview of the exhibit’s concept.

I have a little clip in the middle.

There were a lot of people involved in the success of this exhibit. I am nervous to begin thanking everyone because I know I may end up leaving someone out, but I really want to write this. I was not one of the speakers at the reception and this would have probably made a lousy speech, and you can’t put hyperlinks in a talk either – so this is a better format anyway. I really have so much gratitude toward so many people! Here goes:

Thank you to our sponsors. Their generous donations of time and services made this exhibit possible. To the Peter Drewliner and the Charles E Higa Foundation for a generous financial gift, Edward Enterprises Printing for donating labor on our beautiful catalog, Chromaco, Inc Fine Art Printing for our awards, Associa Inc, and Insurance Associates, and Kimberly Howsley of Aloha Tuscany Studios for financial support.

Thank you to our educators, Kumu Glen Kila, Kumu Joe Recca, Kumu Shirley Recca, Dr. Paul Brennan, and Kamaka Pili. Thank you to all our online educators – many of whose names are hard to find. If your project is on our education page, it was part of our success. You inspired us with your knowledge of these sacred, important locations.

Thank you most of all to Dawn Yoshimura, the curator of the exhibit. The exhibit would not exist without her. This was her baby and she has worked so hard! I do not think anyone has seen the hundreds of hours she donated to the art community because she was overseeing the entire project and doing a large share of the work herself for 5 months (plus the proposal writing time too!). She was the one who pitched the idea and lead us all the way through the design of the show and all the ambitious side projects: panels, discussions, education, etc… She spent the most time of anyone on this project – and that is saying a lot! Time she could have spent at the easel has been spent in connecting and guiding us all to make something greater than the sum of our parts. This is by far the most detailed, far-reaching, community-oriented art event I have been involved in helping to organize. It was all-consuming for me, and even moreso for Dawn. The care and the time really does show in the final exhibit. Some artists have continued their work on series inspired by this exhibit. The influence from this experience will ripple throughout the islands for a long time…

Thank you to Kimberly Howsley for her help as president of AHA and co-chair. She spent many hours editing, planning, and honing the exhibit, and was especially involved in the panels and extra community events. Thanks to her husband Roger, and friends Richard and Asia Di Antonio (who is serving as interim AHA secretary) for their help with tasks especially leading up to the reception! I apologize where I only know first names, but they were so kind to help us!

Thank you to HoMA Director of Curatorial Affairs Healoha Johnston for selecting the concept, and to Exhibit Manager Marlene Siu for hours and hours of coordination with the museum, for helping us communicate with the museum’s teams of graphic designers and web developers. Everyone in the museum team did a wonderful job of helping us bring this exhibit to the larger community. Between AHA and Museum publicity, a crowd of over 200 people showed up for the reception – HOMAS Gallery (Linekona) was standing room only with many people in the hallways!

Thank you to William Zwick for hours spent in painting and hanging the exhibit with Dawn. You two chose a great color of green and I can see the square feet of paint and hours you spent to perfect the exhibit. Every piece is in harmony in its place with its neighbors.

Thank you to Martina for the gorgeous flowers! Your time and aloha really shone through the beauty of the arrangements and lei. The lei I wore at the reception is the most beautiful lei I have ever worn! It was memorable and extravagant! The artist participant lei were unique and wonderful! I have mine hanging in a tree so the Pele’s hair can grow.

Thank you to MaryAnne Long for being our emcee, for helping to communicate with the art community via many email blasts, for helping us get an article out in the Midweek Voice, for all your help at the reception, and for hours of editing help on various written materials. You are so multi-talented!

Thank you to Jui-Lien for a beautiful graphic design contribution. She took the logo and the composite images I created and gave them a cohesive unifying color scheme that inspired everything we did after that initial poster design. Beautiful work! Aslo, she helped us with publicity to a degree I could not have duplicated.

Thank you to Jessica Orfe for her tireless help with promotion – placing posters and postcards, and early design work too! As mentioned, the crowd we drew was thanks in part to your energy and enthusiasm.

Thank you to James Hsu for keeping track of a flurry of treasury activity and writing out who knows how many reimbursement checks for the many details of this exhibit in a timely fashion.

Thank you Liz Corbin for spearheading the refreshments – it was elegantly done! Thank you Adriana Franc, Frances Wong, Barbara Sumida, Linda Umstead, Beth Anderson, and Marilyn Luipold for assistance with the refreshments and cleanup on a hot day where all the punch was gone by the end of the reception!

Thank you to Joe Kingston for the beautiful live music! It’s always a pleasure to hear you play!

Thank you to the 45 other artists for your excellent work! I can tell there was a lot of thought and intention placed into the work you created. It is a very special exhibit because you each took the time to read the prospectus, participate in the process, and follow all the guidelines. I know some of the requirements must have seemed arbitrary before the show, but at least for me, seeing the results hanging in the gallery, I am glad Dawn had the foresight to create the small touches that add a cohesive look to the overall exhibit. Thank you all for sitting the show as well. Your time is truly appreciated! I know it’s a long list, but I want to go ahead and name the participants here with the link to their art on the wahi-pana.com site.

We appreciate our AHA artists Edd Harnas, and Liz Corbin, who have also volunteered to help sit the show with us in solidarity. We managed to fill all the time slots thanks to our generous artists!

As many names as are here, it is not everyone – especially if you were on the museum teams for the facility, security, parking or the graphics/publicity team. I wish I could list you all by name. I know it took time to write the blog, compile the articles, submit copy to chase down third party publicity, to list it on the calendar, to fix the lighting in place for the gallery and the hall, to make sure the gallery is secure each day and every night. There is a whole crew of extremely kind maintenance, exhibits, and security teams who help us with physical logistics. The parking team saved us many headaches by being willing to help us with our passes. Thank you everyone, truly! Without all the collaboration, this would not have all come together. This was truly a huge community effort in which every stroke from every paddle has helped us approach the destination! Mahalo nui loa!

March 8 – 10 was the weekend for creating art – starting the process of going on-site to make art related to the historical education we listened to throughout February and early March.

Personally I was highly involved with selecting and even creating some clips. I ended up watching most of the educational materials for all the sites. I came away from that experience with all sorts of new understanding about the Hawaiian culture and the local history of Kailua and Waianae especially. The most profound experiences for me were the two on-site tours I attended. One was given by Dr. Paul Brennan, archaeologist and one of the main authors of the “Kailua” book (published by the Kailua Historical Society) that is a wonderful authoritative book on the history of Kailua up to the 1950s. The other wonderful tour we took with Kumu Glen Kila of Marae Ha’a Koa at Waianae.

In this blog post, I will share my experiences and clips of the Kailua presentation which covered three main sites: Kawainui in general, including the present-day area of the park and levee, Ulupo Heiau, the ancient agricultural temple that became a luakini with the arrival of Kamehameha, and Na Pohaku o Hauwahine, the boulders of Hauwahine, a beautiful shape shifting mo’o goddess who could appear in the form of a beautiful woman to bathe in the waters of the marsh, a huge lizard (mo’o), or a graceful white fairy tern in order to protect the Kawainui area. The rocks are said to be the place where she would sun herself as she watched over the marsh, but they are also shaped like a massive lizard head, as if they are Hauwahine in her mo’o form. It is an amazing rock promontory overlook with views from the mountains to the ocean.

I have lacking skills in videography, but I edited together several topics from Dr. Brennan’s presentation to share not only with artists, but with anyone who would like to see them. It was truly packed with excellent information. We got rained out so we all went to Sherree’s home for the majority of the tour, but the content he shared brings the past into focus and helps us understand how much the Kawainui area has changed. It was a shallow sea long ago, then a fishpond and realm of the beautiful mo’o Hauwahine who has protected it fiercely through many agricultural uses: kalo, rice farms, cattle, papaya farms, sweet potato, etc… to the modern marsh of international Ramsar importance. It is currently a sanctuary of endangered birds with a levee that changed the entire flow of water throughout Kailua post 1960s. Most plans for development have come and gone, fortunately leaving the marsh open and wild despite rising property values. I like to think that Hauwahine has never given up her guardian role, forever watching from Na Pohaku over the wide green expanse of the wetlands. Certainly many people help guard and restore the precious marsh today, including Dr. Brennan.

All of Paul Brennan’s video clips are on my YouTube Channel. He is an excellent keeper of the post-contact history of Kailua especially. I would love to have everyone watch and listen to what he has to say. Please view them and enjoy them! They are snipped down to clips that average about 10 minutes apiece so it is easier to find time to watch.

The flow of water

Wahi Pana and the Role of Artists:

Na Pohaku o Hauwahine and the Rice Mills:

Kawainui Agriculture:

Ulupo Heiau Area:

Sincerest thanks to Dr. Paul Brennan for taking the time to share just a taste of the many stories he knows about Kawainui area!

Waikiki through time: On the left, rural 1800s Waikiki as depicted in the painting Diamond Head, Waikiki Beach, and Helumoa by Charles Furneaux blended with a modern photo courtesy of Christopher Chappelear, Composite image by Wendy Roberts

Now that the busy holiday season is over, and Punahou Carnival has come and gone, it is time to focus on spring and summer display plans. This spring and summer are going to be very exciting! Fellow artist and good friend Dawn Yoshimura created a thought-provoking exhibit concept for Association of Hawaii Artists (AHA), and also a second excellent concept for Hawaii Watercolor Society. Amazingly, both ideas were accepted by Honolulu Art Museum, and thus, HWS will be busy working on their exhibit, while a group of us from AHA are working on our exhibit, simultaneously bringing these two beautiful ideas to fruition. Having both proposals accepted is quite a honor and an accomplishment for Dawn. Now she is putting her energy into making the AHA exhibit a reality.

I am involved with the AHA exhibit, a prestigious curated show for AHA which will give local artists a chance to show their love of the beautiful islands we live on. Working with Dawn, and AHA’s new president, Kimberly Howsley, we drafted the initial prospectus and associated plans for the upcoming event and exhibit for AHA. The title is: Wahi Pana: A Sense of Place. “Wahi pana” is a special term in Hawaiian. It roughly translates to “the pulse of a place”. It’s quite an amazing imagery. Perhaps the most intimate marking of time we each experience is the pulse of our own hearts. To extend that intimate, universal sense of time to a specific special location is to extend the bounds of our bodies and our senses into the natural world surrounding us. To me, it shows the beautiful reverence for nature that is present in the names and sayings of the Hawaiian culture and language. The important things that happen over the course of time add to the mana or energy of the place. To know the story of a location is to develop a deeper understanding of the feeling you might get when you step into a certain part of the island.

Pali Outlook 1800s to Modern Day: Pali Highway is one of the arteries for modern traffic moving to and from Honolulu and the windward side. It was once a path for Hawaiian villagers and later farmers to bring food by foot and later by cart from farms on the rural windward side over to Honolulu. Vintage photo courtesy of Kailua Historical Society, modern photo and composite by Wendy Roberts.

The Wahi Pana: A Sense of Place exhibit will consist of a historical education session for all artists on a selected location (the are 1 – 3 locations per Hawaiian Island). Over the weekend of March 8 – 10, artists will be meeting in a limited selection of special historical areas to create art on site. This will foster community and more richly illustrate the way different artists experience the same places. The resulting art will be curated to assure quality with a desire to show the diversity of work created by artists living and working in the islands now. Dawn’s underlying question is whether knowing the history and lore of a specific location will enrich or change the appearance or focus of art done on site where artists can feel the energy of the area and remember the stories they have been told. She is an ardent plein air watercolor painter, and it is inevitable root that her concept grew from. This habit of painting regularly outdoors is widespread among a variety of media (oil painter, pastel artists, etc…) especially here in Hawaii where the weather allows for painting outside year-round. The art in the exhibit will not all be paintings and drawings. Other media can be adapted to be created at least partially on-site, so hopefully we will have a variety of lovely 2D and 3D pieces with a palpable sense of place. The show will center on the feeling that stems from first-hand observation and familiarity with the artist’s chosen location. I suspect for many artists the educational segment really will deepen the sense of these locations being unique, and special to history. In turn, perhaps the locations will be more meaningful to the artist as well.

As of this writing, on February 3, 2019, there is a website (wrangling the website will be one of my biggest contributions to the show). It is destined to grow with time into a more comprehensive and information-rich part of the exhibit. Right now, it is mostly geared toward artists, spelling out the concept and presenting the prospectus and calendar. We are trying to spread news of this opportunity throughout the islands. As time goes forth, the site will transform into an online catalog and documentation that augments the exhibit for visitors to the gallery. The address is: www.wahi-pana.com. I will certainly mention it again in the months to come, and expect to be posting a few updates on Instagram and Facebook as the events unfold. Hopefully one of my pieces will be part of the exhibit as well.

If you are an artist on Oahu did you know that Ho`omaluhia has a rail hanging system that uses perlon/fish line to help hang heavy work over the acoustic tile walls? You may have noticed that if you use a single nail for a heavy piece, the piece falls off the wall, sometimes damaging the wall or the artwork in the process. I wanted to offer a printable reference for the artists who are planning to hang art shows at Ho`omaluhia because I have noticed and been told that a couple of art pieces have been falling from virtually every show lately because it’s humid and we forgot to use the rail system or didn’t know the walls were so brittle in certain places. I am hoping this can fill in some gaps and help bring artists who are new to the islands or new to the venue get the information they need to plan a show that will stay on the wall. It’s trickier than you might initially think!

Most artists forgot that there is a rail system and since it blends in, it stopped being useful. We need to revive its use and help each other avoid damage to our art.

To use the guide, I suggest printing a copy to use as a checklist for supplies and then as reference at the gallery. Before you go, use the first page to pack your supplies and you can even cross them out as you pack them. Skim the rest. At take-in, you can read it in detail if you need the info. It’s an instruction manual, so it’s hard to sit and read without doing the actual hanging steps.

Disclaimer: This is just a project to share information that I am doing independently of any guild or venue. No one hired me nor is it officially endorsed. This is not legally binding and won’t guarantee that your art is undamaged, it is simply meant to help increase your odds of a successful show. I have a lot of experience hanging art in the past decade, and better yet, have been learning how to do so from many knowledgeable artists and venue owners, so I am sharing what I have learned over the years with a lot of help and input from other artists, gallerists, and and business owners. Particularly I want to thank the following artists who helped write this document or taught me a lot about hanging a show most effectively: Cynthia Schubert, Marti Rounds, Dawn Yoshimura, Suzanne Barnes, Cindy Livermore, and Liz Corbin. Without their help this guide would not exist.